Developing Social Media Engagement

In today’s online marketing world, social media engagement has become a key factor in boosting brand awareness and increasing conversion rates. If your social media accounts are not generating enough engagement, that could spell trouble for your company.

Social Media Engagement Definition

First, what is social media engagement? In short, a good definition is the measurement of a company’s likes, comments and shares across their social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram and others.

While many people focus on the number of followers they have on their social media pages, the most important factor is the overall social media engagement level. This is how a company can tell if their audience is enjoying what they’re posting.

An easy way to get an idea of your brand’s social media engagement is to add up your total number of likes, comments and shares. Divide that number by the number of followers that you have and then multiply by 100. This equation will give you an average percentage of how many of your followers are engaged with your brand.

If you find that your engagement rate is low, then you need to seriously consider adjusting your social media engagement strategy.

Developing a Social Media Engagement Strategy

If you already have a social media engagement strategy in place that’s not giving you the results you are looking for, then it’s time to reevaluate your strategy. Go over your previous posts and see which ones performed the best. As for the ones that didn’t get good engagement, try to figure out why. It could be something as simple as timing.

If you have no social media engagement strategy at all, then it’s important to develop one. Boosting overall social media engagement is no easy feat. If it were, every brand would be successful, and there wouldn’t be any competition.

A few tactics to help you develop a solid social media engagement strategy include:

Post Regularly – This can be a slippery slope. You want to post high-quality content on a regular basis, but you don’t want to post too much and overwhelm your followers.

Use Visual Content – One of the most powerful tools you can use to help increase social media engagement is to incorporate visual content. Content that includes images saw an 85% interaction rate on Facebook and a 35% increase in shares.

Host Contests – People love to win free stuff. Give your followers a chance to win a prize while they boost your social media engagement along the way.

Go Live – Live videos on Facebook and Instagram are very popular at the moment. Followers are more likely to engage on a live stream because it’s a more personal and immediate experience.

Ask for Feedback – People enjoy talking and sharing their opinions online. Engage your followers by asking them questions.

Feature Community Members – A great way to make folks feel special is by highlighting or featuring them. A monthly or biweekly featured community member can go a long way in boosting your social media engagement.

In order to develop the best social media engagement strategy for your brand, you need to truly understand your audience. Perform research beyond basic demographics. Dive in deep and gain a well-rounded, comprehensive understanding about who you are posting for. This is the best way to boost your social media engagement and keep your followers interacting with your company’s posts.

SharpSpring, Inc. is a full marketing automation company that can provide your business with the tools it needs to improve its social media engagement strategy. For more information or to request a demo, visit our website today.